The BBC director of news, Helen Boaden, and the corporation's director of sport, Roger Mosey, are understood to be among the leading contenders to replace outgoing director of audio and music, Jenny Abramsky.

Boaden, the former controller of BBC Radio 4, is the early favourite for the job should she choose to go for it, according to corporation insiders.

Mosey, ex-editor of Radio 4's Today and former controller of BBC Radio Five Live, is another leading contender.

Other candidates are likely to include the Radio 4 controller, Mark Damazer, the controller of BBC popular music and Radio 2 boss, Lesley Douglas, and the BBC Radio 1 controller, Andy Parfitt.

Roger Mosey: leading contender for the BBC job. Photograph: Linda Nylind
Abramsky announced last week that she was leaving the corporation after nearly 40 years to chair the board of the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

The director of audio and music role is among the most powerful in the corporation, overseeing all the BBC's national radio networks, including its digital stations, as well as television music entertainment and the BBC Proms.

In her last year in the job, Abramsky was responsible for an annual programming budget of £236m and nearly 1,700 staff, commanding a pay packet of £329,000 a year. The role also comes with a place at the corporation's top table, the BBC's executive board.

Like Abramsky, three of the likely contenders to replace her also come from a news background - Boaden, Mosey and Damazer, who was previously deputy director of BBC news before taking charge of Radio 4 in 2004.

Douglas has risen rapidly up the pecking order since succeeding Jim Moir as Radio 2 controller in 2003. She also oversees digital music station 6Music and took on a new role last year as the BBC's first controller of pop music, coordinating its output in the genre across radio, TV and online.

Parfitt is another station controller whose remit has expanded in recent years. As well as BBC Radio 1, Parfitt's responsibilities now also include digital stations 1Xtra and the BBC Asian Network, as well as its multiplatform content initiative aimed at teenagers, BBC Switch.

Some insiders suggested that the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, might use Abramsky's exit to dismantle the "audio and music" department, which was created in 2006 to form a new structure at the top of BBC radio.

This might enable the creation of a genuine "music supremo" role across the whole of the BBC's output - an enlarged version of Douglas's "head of pop" role - with responsibility for news radio output hived off elsewhere.

Abramsky is due to take up her new role as chair of the National Heritage Memorial Fund in September.

In her email to staff announcing her departure last week, Abramsky said: "There are many strong candidates to take over as director of audio and music, and I have no doubt that, when I finally do leave, [audio and music] will be in as strong a position as it has ever been."

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